Tag Archives: belted kingfisher

Last year it was a Belted Kingfisher. What a commanding presence with his big handsome crested head, his strong beak. He sat on the lowest branch of the spruce over the water, making a terrific din. Below him was a large dead snake in the water. I thought the kingfisher might have found the snake too big to handle and had dropped it into the pond and was now trying to retrieve it, but I’m told that is highly unlikely. He stayed there all day, then that was it, I never saw him again. I had to fish the snake out with my net.

Another time the surprise was a beautiful red fox. No hanging around. Just slipped past.

Then there was a bear – but fortunately that was on a neighbor’s property!

This year, there was the turtle. A bee sting was new to me too. And today: two fairly young deer with antlers. We see a lot of deer including, once, a three-legged deer, but I’d never, in the more than twenty years I’ve been here, seen antlered deer. The antlers were about eighteen inches, knobby rather than spiked points. Just beautiful. I reached for my camera, but they were already gone. Good. Hunting season is not so very far off.